I am becoming convinced that the only place in which change can be won is on the streets of Britain. This will come as soon as the mass of people see that the present voting system is as fraudulent as the Poll Tax was unfair.

Doubt it, unless the Tories actually smell the coffee and join the call.

Interestingly, there was supportive debate on this on Question Time this evening - except for Matthew Parris, mind.

One essential is to keep up the pressure on Labour MP's. I have today e-mailed Dr Lynne Jones following her article in the Guardian. Below is a copy of what I said. I have conentrated on the essential short-sightedness of the continued support for FPTP. Other campaigners will doubtless concentrate on other aspects - there's a vast array to choose from!

"Dear Dr Jones,

"This election has seen the loss of many Labour MPs of integrity. But as a result of our reduced majority, there will be much more opportunity for Labour backbenchers to exert influence over the government"

Perhaps it is a little too much to expect a Labour MP not to be included in the conspiracy of silence that seems to have descended on the Party over the question of electoral reform. However, I do hope that this matter is in fact going to be kept alive by the more progressive MP's and that you are amongst the latter.

It really is time that we got rid of this stupid tribalism which resulted in the scuppering of the Jenkins report; and that we recognised that there is probably more in common between the progressive members of the Labour Party and the LibDems than there is between the left-wing of the Labour Party and "New" Labour (vide Scotland where the coalition between Labour and LibDems has worked well and brought benefits). This being so what can we make of a system where a left-of-centre majority in a constituency can find itself "represented" by a reactionary Tory simply because a few voters switched from Labour to LibDem - about which Blair never tired of warning us (although of course he did not put it in those words)

More generally how can Tony Blair hold up his head and boast about an unprecedented third term when in fact there are 78% of the electorate who did not vote for his government. And can he not see the writing on the wall as the Tories begin to recover?

Jenkins was scuppered by the diehard tribalists in the party (who have subsequently also blocked the "review" promised in 2001) dazzled by the enormous 1997 majority. In this regard you have probably read Timothy Garten Ash's article in which he quotes Paddy Ashdown in the following terms:-

'According to Paddy Ashdown's riveting diaries, eight years ago tomorrow, on May 6 1997, Blair told him: "'My people are saying to me they can't see the point of having anything to do with you lot, since we have such a huge majority'. To which I reply: 'What the Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away'." '

This was despite the unequivocal commitment in the 1997 manifesto: how cynical can one get! And should it be any surprise that I have resigned from the Labour Party because of their bad faith in regard to reform? Do not these short-sighted tribalists ("my people") recognise that the first-past-the-post lottery that gave them this enormous majority (with the support of a mere 31% of the electorate) will in due course do precisely the same for the recovering Tories - as it did for two decades for Thatcher, (when incidentally there was always a majority for the left-of-centre parties; and if we had had PR the Thatcher disaster would never have occurred)?

In the first paragraph of her work "The March of Folly" Barbara Tuchman asks "Why do holders of high office so often act contrary to the way reason points and ENLIGHTENED SELF-INTEREST suggests?" Perhaps Barbara Tuchman's book should be required reading for all the members of the Cabinet!

Best wishes

Joe Patterson"


By the way: what happens to subscribers'comments? Are they just deleted the day after they are posted? If not where can we find them? I've tried every possibly relevant link on the page without any success.

I'd agree with the comments of others that the problem is the ones in power have the power to make the change!

And let's be honest, those in power aren't going to be overly keen on changing the system that got them in power.

Nina Temple suggests that maybe the best strategy is to wait until The Lib Dems win under the current system.

Surely the best move now would be for all of us to email all Tory MPs. Now is the time when the Tories would benefit from reform more than at any time in their history.

Steve - as I hypothesised earlier, the Tories might now think, given the positives of this election for them, that they can get back in under fptp in 2009 - perhaps especially if brown takes over sooner rather than later. provided they find a leader.

I personally can't see the Tories ever voting for reform - if they get the boundaries sorted out a bit better, that'll probably be enough for them

Scott

If we wait till the LibDems get in under the present system the LibDems will no longer be in favour of reform. As Jenkins commented in his 1998 report : "parties, when they want to reform do not have the power and when they have the power they do not want to reform".

It seems to me that the only hope for reform (now that our hope for a possible hung parliament has been dashed)is a public outcry at a crazy system which gives us a government for which 78% of the electorate have not voted. It would appear that the media are becoming more prepared to discuss the electoral system and surprise! surprise! there was actually a very enlightening discussion on Today this morning.

Let us hope that this trend will continue because unless it does the public is going to remain as unaware as it already appears to be of the gross unfairness of FPTP - and the outry will not take place

I don't think the way ahead is to wait for the Lib Dems to win power. I was posing some provocative questions to get this discussion going.
A lot of people seem to want to do some public campaigning. Maybe we could have another day of action in high streets across Britain on Saturday week 232 May with new leaflets and a paper version of the petition.
And maybe we could do something next week on the day of the Queen's speech.

Thanks Joe but it was Steve that posted the Lib Dem comment! No credit to me!

Did find th format on the board a bit confusing when I first logged in to.

Ref my letter to Lynne Jones quoted above: it is perhaps of interest that she has replied saying that she is in favour of Jenkins and that she will be putting down a question to Tony Blair on why the report was not followed up (but if her question does not come out of the hat it just won't be asked - so we should not hold our breath!)

I wonder Nina, and anybody else writing on these pages, whether you consider that there is any merit in this idea for raising public awareness further, and ultimately bringing pressure to bear on the Government to undertake reform of the voting system.

It occurred to me whilst reading about various campaigns (sometimes led by organisations such as "Which" magazine, and others) to bring together the numerous complaints of members of the public about a particular issue under the "umbrella" heading of a group "super-complaint", and then to direct such complaints in a strong lobbying action to the relevant regulatory or supervising body such as OfWat or OfTel or whatever or whoever it may be. Such lobbying with the backing of a strong body like the Consumers' Council often has greater effect than a series of individual complaints.

Now in the case of Voting Reform, much as I am loath to admit, foster or encourage the idea that we the voters should somehow be reduced to the status of mere "consumers", but in effect, that is exactly what has been happening whether we like it or not; the targetting of individual votes, houses, streets etc. in a target constituency using demographic marketing tools such as the "Mosaic" software program demonstrates that as far as the cynical party machines go, they consider that the electorate is simply a bunch of consumers whose tastes can be measured and manipulated just as if a new cereal or soap powder brand was being launched. So perhaps we need to fight fire with fire; in addition to all the other extremely cogent reasons for supporting reform of the electoral system is there not a perfectly valid case for arguing that because of the ludicrously skewed nature of the present system we don't actually get "good value for money" from our Government, our MPs, our Parliament? Since the votes of 98% of the electorate don't actually count for anything and cannot make any difference to the outcome, is there not an argument for saying that we are "shortchanged" in a, quite literally, "monetary" (never mind democratic) sense?

"Poor value for money" is one of those issues that even right-wing pundits and press like to fulminate about; we might even find the "Daily Mail" taking up the issue!

Does anybody else feel that this idea "has legs" (to use a silly phrase from the ad-men's lexicon)?

Nina - where are the details of tomorrow's event?

Why, they're up at the top of this here blog :)

Enjoy.